Selling to Anyone Over the Phone phần 3 ppt

Remember the last time you were so focused on closing that you overlooked an opportunity or a key phrase that the customer shared with you?. Keep in mind that all salespeople look alike

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What is your conclusion? Are you already thorough in this

element of your job, or are there some areas you can

im-prove? If there is room for improvement, target specific areas

Refer to these as you go through the chapters in this book

Planning involves an active process: goals, expectations, attitude, and organization All of these can be improved with a professional awareness and discipline in making your calls

Listen to the Customer

Now, with all this planning, and all the ideas you have collected, you will need to listen carefully to what the customer actually says and not filter what you hear This means that the whole plan you have put together may need to be revamped on the fly when the customer intimates something different from what you expected Remember the last time you were so focused on closing that you overlooked an opportunity or a key phrase that the customer shared with you? How well were you listening to the deeper level in the phone conversation? You need to focus on the hidden messages

Customer interest selling is a conversation It is easier to get

someone to engage, when you let that person talk Then, steering the prospect into your goal area topics will be much smoother—not to mention how much easier it is to get a customers to take your call when they know you will respond to them where they are mentally Keep in mind that all salespeople look alike on the phone, and with both internal and external salespeople calling your customer all day with their own needs and pitches, customers will remember you

as the one who listened for a change This subtle difference will make your call more memorable

Suddenly, you won’t be just another one of those people who calls with machine-gun blasts of feature dumps In addition, you will clearly differentiate yourself from the customary interrogation method used by many strong-arm–type phone salespeople You will

be the one who ‘‘gets’’ what the customer is saying, and as a result, closes the sale!

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Ask High-Value Questions

There are truly good and bad questions In addition, there are appro-priate times to ask these questions Most good salespeople know how

to qualify However, only the true peak-performing salespeople know

in what order to ask questions.

In general, good questions can do the following:

can be solved by your product or service

process

In contrast, bad questions can often:

sooner than expected

discovering needs

rapport

A seasoned professional must have the ability to listen and qualify over the phone at a deep level This topic is so critical to your success that this book devotes an entire chapter each to questioning and lis-tening What separates professionals from amateurs are good ques-tions that:

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When you ask questions that show you know something about the customer’s specific situation or, at the very least, the customer’s in-dustry, you become a potentially valuable partner to that customer Also, the customer develops respect for you and feels as if you know enough to not be wasting his or her time with stupid questions Once again, this is one of your key differentiators as a professional

By leading a customer to uncovering a problem or finding a solu-tion to that problem, you are ensuring that the customer will take your call before others, and also that you will close more business faster Open-ended questions starting with who, what, when, where,

and how are fine What about why? Why questions too often put

peo-ple on the defensive Why? Just ask someone close to you why they were late and see how this person responds!

You can often elicit why type information by starting with ‘‘Tell

me ’’ instead So add tell to the previous list In fact, the more

tell questions you ask, the more information you will get from your customers This is our definition of high-value questioning After all, isn’t the objective to get the customer talking about his or her needs?

Yak Less

Most of the best sales professionals in the world got into trouble more than once for talking too much when they were in school It appears now, though, that as professional salespeople, we’ve taken a perceived liability and turned it into an asset The truth is that most salespeople love people If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be in sales!

Now, as professionals with quotas to meet and commissions to earn, we are ready to funnel and control that energy in a positive way

We talk to build rapport, make our customers like us, and convey information We just need to be careful not to have too many mono-logues! Remember, if you’re talking, the customer is not; and when the customer is not talking, there is no guarantee he or she is listening

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to you On the telephone, you won’t be able to tell if the customer is listening to you, checking an e-mail, reading a lunch menu, or having

a silent conversation with someone in the office If the customer is talking, he or she is focusing on you

Not talking can be an excellent tool in sales A second of silence after a major point lets it soak into the brain of your customer; your pause midsentence can create anticipation Being quiet after asking a question can give your customer time to think, so you can elicit more valuable information Also, continuing to talk after the customer is sold can result in talking a customer right out of a sale, as shown in the following example:

Susan was on the phone with a large client and had gotten

a commitment within the first three minutes But in her enthu-siasm, Susan kept listing benefits of the product Eventually, the customer backed off, and the sale was lost At some

point, the customer heard something that struck a nerve or maybe just became frustrated with the perceived ‘‘yakking’’

of Susan’s voice Whatever the reason, the result was that Susan sabotaged her own efforts.

For the most part, talking too much or too fast creates duress in the conversation Hey, don’t we have enough potential adversity in our calls already? Sometimes it is difficult to know what is too much

or what is inappropriate But long silences on the other end of the phone, either because you are doing all the talking or because the customer is not responding, will tell you that you may not be doing enough listening Remember to ask yourself, ‘‘Am I talking for me or for the client?’’ Lastly, if the customer has to keep interrupting to get

a word in edgewise, that’s another clue

Just because you know a mountain of information about your product, doesn’t mean the customer wants all of it In fact, the cus-tomer only needs to hear one thing: ‘‘How are you going to make

me happy?’’ Period End of discussion

Involve Your Customer

Whenever your product or service lends itself to an interactive dem-onstration, help the customer take possession The Internet and

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pany networks have made it possible for you to be on the phone with

a customer while explaining a slide presentation that the customer can access on your company’s Web site Alternatively, you can walk the customer through the order process with your software, take him

or her to an online comparison, or a streaming video online Perhaps you have a perfect opportunity to set up a face-to-face call for the demo at the customer’s site

This is one of those places in the conversation where the customer

interest approach comes in When you have uncovered an area of

in-terest the customer has, immediately involve him or her in using or working with your product or service in some way An example is asking your customer to walk through a demo site with you

Make sure that every time you share a feature of your service to

your customers, you follow it up with a specific benefit to them Okay,

every salesperson has been taught the idea of benefits at one time or another But is the benefit you’re giving them one from the market-ing department’s list or is it one you can connect directly to the cus-tomer’s particular situation?

A true benefit is a ‘‘what’s in it for them’’ proposition The bad news is that most salespeople provide a laundry list of features and forget to add the relevance to the customer Making a comment such

as ‘‘We’ve been in business since 1909’’ is irrelevant to the customer You would need to follow up that comment with: ‘‘What that means

to you is that we have been around for almost one hundred years, so you can enjoy peace of mind that we know what we’re doing; reduc-ing your lead time and stress.’’ After you mention the benefit, ask for confirmation to keep the customer involved We refer to this as the

check-in or the F-B-C formula: feature V benefit V check-in,

dis-cussed further in Chapter 10

Negotiate to Clarify Close

If the close is imminent, you might negotiate the customer’s easy questions, such as ‘‘Is Tuesday delivery possible?’’ ‘‘Does it come in red?’’ ‘‘What’s the lead time?’’

On the other hand, tough questions are usually the objections Classic objections include the following:

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▲ Inertia ‘‘We’re just fine with our current suppliers.’’

▲ Budget ‘‘That’s not in the budget this go-around.’’

▲ Quality ‘‘I’m not sure that’s the quality that will work for us.’’

▲ Price ‘‘Your price is just too high.’’

Questions or voiced objections let you know that a negotiation is in progress

Objections are easily defined: Anything that isn’t a yes is an ob-jection—whether voiced or unvoiced However, if your customers have no questions, they’re not involved in the sales process How many times have you heard the following:

Salesperson: Do you have any questions?

Customer: No, I’m okay

At least with questions, the negotiation is still open, and a clever salesperson can parlay that into a close After ‘‘No, I’m okay,’’ all you have left is ‘‘Well, thank you for your time.’’ How much commission

do you think you’ll get from this call? Worse yet, you’ll probably never get another connection with this person the next time you try

It isn’t always easy to determine if the voiced objection or ques-tion is a real concern or just a smokescreen, or maybe just a way to get you off the phone Whatever the question or objection, even if it

is one you’ve heard countless times, treat it as if it is real and handle

it In Chapter 9, you will learn four methods to handle many specific objections (as well as those ‘‘We’re okay’’ responses) The better you become at negotiation, the shorter your closing times will be, trans-lating into more closes per day

Gain a Commitment

The commitment stage is the close to the call As noted in the previ-ous section, the phrase, ‘‘Thank you for your time,’’ is not an accept-able close There are many types of closes, including the following:

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If you do not effectively close, you have lost your gold Create or affirm an opportunity to make a return call by setting a date or some sort of confirmation Remember, your customer is not thinking about you, so some way of moving the commitment to the front of the customer’s mind is imperative For example, ask the customer to take out his or her calendar to record it while on the phone In this way, both of you are clear about what is going to happen next

The key to making a close that sticks is taking it a step further, beyond the mere agreement Play out with the customer the mechan-ics of how the sale is going to happen The customer may need to act

by a certain date to meet budget guidelines, for example If you set a date for follow-up, you can monitor the process

For example, you might say, ‘‘Based on your implementation date, it’s clear you need to make a decision by the seventeenth So, I’ll call you Tuesday Is morning or afternoon better? Two-thirty? Okay, I’ll call you on Tuesday at two-thirty.’’ Then, you must be absolutely certain to follow-through on this appointment, as it is a crucial test in the mind of the customer of your own level of commit-ment

If you tell a customer, ‘‘I’ll call you later,’’ you probably will not reach him or her Setting and following through on times are signs

of the true professional, and your customers will be more likely to honor their commitments to you when you make sure to do this

The Payoff

Not only new sales reps but experienced ones as well can get caught

up in the frenetic nature of the phone-selling situation Salespeople often say, ‘‘I have to get it all out in a short period of time Every-body’s busy.’’ So, instead of calmly and strategically approaching the

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call, the salesperson blurts out random benefits or loses focus during the call

Think about how the line results of a lie detector test look When the person in the chair is answering expected, easy questions in a truthful way, the line is smooth and flowing But, when brain activity becomes frantic from confusion or second-guessing, the line shows

up as erratic and zigzagged Your customers perceive this seat-of-the-pants behavior in you and respond to it negatively When you use a process, you are always in control and can remain calm and pur-poseful

By using the PLAYING model, you are consciously controlling the call, and the customer is playing in harmony with you You follow models all the time in your daily life You don’t put on your under-wear after your pants, so why would you do your presentation before you qualify your prospect? The answer is that without a solid guide, you can become lost in indecision when things don’t happen as

hoped (The word hope is appropriate here, because without a solid

approach, a sale is just a hope.)

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C H A P T E R

Identifying Personality

Types Over the Phone

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I F YOU ’ VE EVER ATTENDED a rock concert where you were able to sit close to the stage, you might have seen a member of the band’s crew off to the side tuning guitars Energetic strokes by the lead guitarist can stretch strings slightly out of proper tension In order to keep the quality of the sound perfect and allow it to blend with the other guitars and singers, the lead player regularly swaps guitars with the assistant who then hands the guitarist a freshly tuned instrument

Setting up a guitar properly requires a tuning fork or an elec-tronic tone device When the sound coming from the guitar string vibrates at the proper level and matches the device, the guitar is said

to be in tune An out-of-tune instrument would sound ‘‘off ’’ and would make the guitarist appear to be inept

As a salesperson, however, being in tune with your customers is often the determining factor of a sale You will be able to hit it off with nearly every customer when you use strategies that place you in harmony with your customers’ personalities Harmony equals sales Learning to get on the same frequency as each of your customers will dramatically increase your close rate Recognizing a customer’s personality type may be more difficult over the telephone than in per-son, but there are definitely clues you can learn to identify

Of course, it helps to understand what your own personality type